


Beauty

by bugsuit



Series: 100 Prompts - Archer [2]
Category: Archer (Cartoon)
Genre: Alcohol, Gen, Poker Nights, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 01:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5847982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bugsuit/pseuds/bugsuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poker night exists in a bubble, so nobody really minds getting a little personal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beauty

Cheryl, or Carol or Cherlene or whatever’s written on her legal documents now, thinks the bursts behind her eyes when someone strangles the shit out of her are beautiful. _Like fireworks going off,_ she tells everybody – this was unsolicited, of course, and it more or less just tumbled out of her when someone brought weed to poker night. Their game finished half an hour ago, and she’s lying in the middle of the table in just her skirt and bra, one leg crossed over the other and bouncing lazily.

 _Like fireworks in space. That’s what beauty is. Like fireworks that just happen behind your eyes and then they’re gone when he knocks you out. One, two,_ urgh,  _boom._

She glances at Cyril in this expectant sort of way, and it takes Cyril a second or two of awkwardness before he realises she wants him to talk about beauty, not choke her. (Though maybe she would go for either.) He says that Lana is beautiful, and everyone groans. No, listen. Lana and people _like_ Lana.

“So, women in general?” asks Pam, sounding amused. “Or just women who’re way out of your league?” She laughs. “Or are we talkin’ about the man hands?”

No, Cyril insists, _confident_ women! Women who are strong enough to take care of themselves, but that’s not the point, he means women who will let _him_ do it – that’s not it, either. He thinks for a while and it’s after the joint has been passed around full circle again that he speaks. Big, strong, confident women who still just… _want_ somebody, y’know?

Pam is about to rip the shit out of him for that, but she closes her mouth and rocks back in her chair and stares up at the ceiling instead. She knows he didn’t _mean_ to mean it like that but he did just describe _her,_ and that’s… proof of something. She’ll take it.

A hand sticks up from beneath the table and Cyril flinches out of the way.

It waggles a bit, prompting Pam to sigh out a cloud of smoke and say, “Yeah, Krieger?”

Beauty, Krieger says, is in science. “When chemicals lock together and react and _bubble up.”_ His voice sounds kind of heated, and no one asks him anything else, but he continues anyway. “If you’ve seen movies, you know what I’m talking about. Like champagne fizz, but _you_ did it. _You’re_ in control of that. It’s _beautiful.”_

“You’re a real live Frankenstein, aren’tcha?” Pam smirks.

“Oh, my God. The living subjects are the best. _That’s_ beauty. When something starts producing its own warmth…”

“Easy on, Frank. You sound like _you’re_ producin’ warmth.” Pam holds the joint under the table and Krieger’s fingers gently pluck it out of hers. “Smoke that ‘n’ shut up. We’re not doin’ a science orgy. What about you, Ray?”

“Nuh-uh, sister, you go first.”               

Pam’s idea of beauty is kind of skewed by now; her stance on physical beauty is mostly limited to very orthodox little components. Like hips, or bedhead, or the red light of a motel sign on someone’s skin when it glows down at you both through the fogged-up windscreen. But this is poker night, and her colleagues aren’t orthodox. She hums thoughtfully.

She says beauty has gotta be either the taste of someone, like, when you’re eating them out or sucking them off or whatever. (Krieger goes very still under the table, so she can tell he’s listening.) Or, she adds quickly, it’s finding out they own a copy of the Kama Sutra.

They all look at Ray.

He takes the joint Krieger passes up to him, says nothing about the fact that Krieger reduced it almost to a stub, and smokes the rest of it with his finger held up to shut everybody up.

The smoke sighs out of him, and he croaks, “Mobility is pretty beautiful.”

The others don’t look very impressed, and Ray smirks.

“Okay, fine. Combine…” He thinks. “Combine ecstasy with a one-night-stand.”

“Not detailed enough, Robocop,” Pam chastises him.

Cheryl frowns. “Yeah! We all said some poetic crap. Tell us something like that.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Cyril eyeing up the joint, so he deliberately smokes the rest of it before saying anything else. No one complains. He’s pretty sure they consider that a bribe to give a real answer.

“There was this boy,” he says, and that’s how they all know this is going to be a story. “Back in Ferlin.”

There’s something in his tone that keeps everybody silent, or maybe it’s the weed. Ray leans back in his chair and stares blankly at the green tabletop, the thumb on his non-cybernetic hand worrying at a scratch in the fuzzy covering. If they asked, he’ll tell.

“He had a face like chiselled granite. All angular and… you know good cheekbones when you see ‘em. We were young and stupid, and we were clearin’ out an old hay-loft this one time.” He closed his eyes for a second, sifting through what was left of the memory, and told it like he saw it. “I was tossin’ this rusty ol’ rake down to him from the loft, and the sun was comin’ in through the doors behind him. He was all lit up from behind, an’ I thought about those angels you see in church glass.”

Pam and Cyril were staring at him, leaning in like vultures with an urgent look in their eyes. Their resident table-scientist had gone silent as the grave, and even Cheryl had lifted her head from the table to look at him curiously. Everyone, he realised, was waiting for closure.

He gave them what he had. “I worked up the courage to kiss him on the cheek. Timed it for right when we were just inside the door, outta sight of pryin’ eyes, the works,” he said, and sighed. “Bastard punched me straight in the nose. A week later, I was shipped off to camp. You know which.”

Nobody seemed to know what to say, but, well, they _had_ asked.

A soft clink of glass broke the silence, followed by the rich noise of liquid pouring into a glass. Pam set the bottle back down and gently pushed the glass of scotch across the table towards him, a wordless gesture that he supposed he appreciated. Ray shrugged nonchalantly, didn’t look at anybody, and raised it to his lips.

“I think beauty is a fight,” Cheryl said suddenly, inspired. “Like, looking at your own black eye in the mirror and noticing a blood vessel popped.”

The atmosphere goes back to normal, and the discussion rolls back around, and Ray sinks a little further down in his chair because the drugs are starting to hit him. It was pretty strong stuff. He can only imagine how Krieger is doing right now, since Ray is pretty sure he sneaked most of it.

He glances across at Pam, and realises she’s still looking at him just before she quickly averts her gaze.

Poker night ends like it usually does, at stupid o’clock and with at least two flipped chairs. An unconscious Krieger is dragged into his lab and left on an operating table, and Cheryl goes home in his lab coat because she doesn’t remember where her shirt is. Cyril is more buzzed than he’s comfortable with, and when he ducks into the secret spa because it’s closer than home, they just warn him not to puke in there and then let him be.

Pam without a word, somehow ends up walking Ray back to his place. He doesn’t object, and when they reach his apartment building, he gives her a less-than-sober bop on the arm with his fist. She comments on that, _something something machismo,_ and turns to head back to the rougher part of town.

Poker night, he thinks as he’s leaning on the elevator handrail and jabbing what he’s half-sure is the right button, is only real when you’re there. It’s a chemical reaction, like Krieger said, or like a firework going off in space. It exists in the moment.

Pam, vaguely aware that she’s way less drunk than she meant to get, follows a different route home to walk off the rest of it. The night air is chilly, but she’s still thinking about poker night and what it means. All she knows is Cyril was right – life is all about confidence, about saying what you mean, and that perfectly applies to poker night. And, she thinks, poker night is like the taste of salt.


End file.
